Schareina seizes Dakar Rally lead in Honda one-two-three

The results were really good on a difficult stage. With Tosha opening all day and still winning was not what we expected as it was such a long, difficult stage. He told me that he rode smoothly and didn’t take any risks. Ricky did a really good stage too, he caught up to Tosha at 200 km and rode with him for the rest of the day. Skyler was in a good position today to attack and finished in third. Adrien tried to find some extra pace after his crash. Let’s see how the stage pans out tomorrow, this marathon has been really tough so far. I hope the riders arrive to Hail in good condition.

It was a long stage. I started second today behind my teammate, Tosha. He did an excellent job opening. I started out a little bit slow today, but fortunately I found the pace and picked it up a little bit. I caught up to Tosha and me and him kind of navigated the last 200 km together, it was cool. It was a fun time. I think we’re both in a really good position, I think we’re both happy on the day. The terrain with the navigation was tricky because we were on these big slab that had no track on it and you just really had to follow the CAP heading and trust yourself to make it to the end of the slab and hopefully there’s a road there. It got tricky a couple of times and I got off track early on and just had to compensate the CAP heading and kind of go off piste. I got super lucky two times and the waypoint opened, so after that I slowed down a little bit and just made sure I was navigating. I caught Tosha before refuelling so we navigated together a lot today and it was cool, you know, we had fun and I think we did an excellent job. The bike didn’t touch the ground today, I’ve just got to check over the tyres, but I think for the moment the bike is perfectly fine.

A tough day. I probably caught a chill from the air conditioning and my energy was at its lowest today. I tried to look after my tyres because we knew there could be issues, and I think I have a problem with one of them. We'll see how it goes tomorrow with my rear tyre. I think the challenge will be about who can make it across the finish line with their tyres. I believe mine is not in very good condition. So it’s going to be interesting to see how tomorrow goes. If my tyre fails that’ll be the end of it, so hopefully we can make it through tomorrow. Tonight we’re going to sleep out in a tent and hopefully I can get some good rest, I’m going to need it. I feel pretty drained right now. Overall, the stage went good for me, a couple of little turnarounds out there, but this one was a long and demanding one. This is the Dakar, it’s always been pretty difficult but the last couple of years, this first week has been really challenging.

We had a few nice sandy pistes to ride, but we also had a lot of stones and rocky plateaus. So far we’ve had very rough stages. You can see it from the state of the tyres and wheels for everyone and the risk level is still high because you’re hoping a bad rock won’t end up under your wheels. The pace is really high and I need to get onto that and give my maximum. It’s still a long way from the end of the rally so I’ll keep pushing each day.

The mission for today was open from the beginning to the end and we did it. At the 200 km mark, Ricky caught me and we were riding together until the end. Over the last 200 km it was not easy, I expected something easier with the navigation but finally we are here at the marathon stage. We will try to rest and sleep well. At the moment everything is OK with the bike, we will see tomorrow what the stage will be like, if there are rocky sections again. We will see.